New releases enliven stories with gorgeous illustrations

Abuse, betrayal, addiction and grief form the base for memoirs these days — even beautiful ones like Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. But Swim: Why We Love the Water, by pioneering TV news correspondent Lynn Sherr, breaks from the memoir of despair, favoring passion instead.

Sherr — who has also written a biography of Susan B. Anthony and a book about giraffes, fabulously titled Tall Blondes — celebrates swimming and its effects on our lives. "Swim" is "an inquiry into why we swim — the lure, the hold, the timeless enchantment of being in the water." Swimming may be Sherr's salvation, but one needn't be an enthusiast to be charmed by this graceful memoir and its black-and-white illustrations.

This piece ran in full in Printers Row Journal, delivered to Printers Row members with the Sunday Chicago Tribune and by digital edition via email.